"Thanks to the DS, this is better than the average Yu-Gi-Oh game"

Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour was unveiled by Konami at E3 2004 as the first game of its kind on the newly-unveiled Nintendo DS and now, more than a year later, it has been presented to us. As usual, its goal is to present to card game in video game form, and thanks to the DS hardware, it accomplishes this quite nicely.

First off, if you're not a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh! or don't know anything about it, don't bother with this game. Aside from a few tutorial-like battles at the beginning of the game, Nightmare Troubadour assumes the player already has knowledge of the card game. OK, now on to the game itself. The battles themselves are divided into the two screens. On top, you see the monsters, spells and traps you've played on a 3-D rendered field, and on the bottom is a top-down overhead view of the normal field, just like a regular card game. The rules are the ones used as of March 2005, so as it is with every Yu-Gi-Oh! game, some cards are illegal to have in your deck, and some you can only have one or two of (the limit on any card is three).

Once you're in battle, there's really nothing to it if you know what you're doing. One of the more positive things about this game is that the DS makes for a much more comfortable card battler than the GBA ever could. You can play this entire game with the stylus if you so choose; you can tap the bottom screen to draw your card, set and summon monsters, set and play spells and traps, choose which opponent's monsters to target, and choose what phase you're in. If the pen isn't your thing, you can still use the control pad and four buttons, but if you're gonna do that you might as well play one of the GBA games because, like I said before, having it on the DS makes it flow much better and makes it generally more fun to play.

Nightmare Troubadour's attempt at a story is about what you'd expect. The Kaiba Corporation is holding yet another Duel Monsters tournament, and you've entered it. You're given a Duel Disk, which stores your deck and all your extra cards, and set out to battle other duelists in the city for a chance at the top. To find other duelists, you have to use the DS's bottom screen as a radar. Using either the control pad or the stylus, you move the blue cursor until you hit an area that turns it green, which means someone is nearby. Move it slowly until it turns pink and flashes very quickly, and even slower still until you've found the opponent in the area, and then you can begin your battle.

You can earn KC points to buy new packs of cards from the card shop in duels. You get a certain amount for winning, and miscellaneous points for a wide number of bonuses, such as winning in three turns, not using any spells, having all your monster zones filled, and so on. More sets get unlocked as you progress, and every so often a truly good card will come out of a pack. If you're a real-life Yu-Gi-Oh

player, you're gonna have to swallow your pride for a while, because for quite some time at the beginning, you're limited to rather low ATK monsters and a few wimpy spells and traps. The good thing about this is that your opponents will be about the same level as you, so you don't really have to worry if Neo the Magical Swordsman (ATK 1700, DEF 1000) is your strongest monster for a while. Just throw the right cards together and you'll be fine.

The Link Play mode is also a nice touch, mostly because I don't need my annoying Link Cables anymore. In Link Play mode, you can duel your friends, trade for cards you don't have, and so on. If you and your friend know what you're doing, it can be quite a kick. Most of the fun is being able to see the monsters in 3-D, instead of having to rely on the illustrations of the regular TCG.

All in all, Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour is a decent game. For any Yu-Gi-Oh! fan out there, it also comes with the now-standard three bonus cards, these ones being for anyone with a Spellcaster deck. I wasn't expecting a deep story or a complex fighting system or any such nonsense, but for a game of this type, that's how I like it anyway.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/06/05